Often the exteriors of vials and other small bottles, even after they have received their contents, must undergo a thorough cleaning. Thus, for example, where the contents take the form of a powder, some of this material may adhere to the vials' exterior during the filling process. This can prove esthetically unacceptable.
Furthermore, the subsequent use of the vials may impose a requirement of cleanliness. In the ultimate, vials finding use in an operating room environment may have to have their exteriors extremely clean. These vials must undergo a very thorough cleaning prior to their use in this fashion.
Various types of cleaning and handling equipment have found use for vials and other containers. Thus, some cleaners have employed one or more star wheels which entrain the vials in pockets on their outer edges. The wheels then turn the vials or bottles through arcs of varying degrees during which time they may undergo cleaning. One star wheel bottle duster that has received acclaim appears in U.S. Pat. No. 4,701,973, issued on Oct. 27, 1987, to W. J. McBrady et al. This equipment finds use in cleaning bottles passing along an installed conveyor belt. Fitting over that conveyor, it removes the bottles, subjects them to a blast of ionized air, vacuum, and brushing and redeposits them on the same conveyor. However, even in this advancement, the bottles spend only a limited time within the cleaning apparatus. Thus, this equipment may prove marginal for conducting additional stages of cleaning such as detergent rinses, water rinses, and air drying.
The Seidenader Company of Germany has gone further and produced a unit employing two star wheels in tandem. A first wheel takes the bottles off a mass conglomeration pushed together by an end-feed mesh belt. The first wheel then rotates the bottles through approximately 270 degrees and subjects them to various cleaning operations. The bottles then transfer to the second wheel which, with somewhat more than 270 degrees, subjects them to further operations.
The use of two wheels, as in the Seidenader equipment, extends the distance the vials travel and thus the number of work stations that may operate upon them. However, it does not quite double the linear distance available from a single wheel since the two wheels require a distance between them to transfer the bottles from one to the other. Moreover, the use of two wheels requires an extensive horizontal area for the machine. This in turn requires more equipment and entails greater expense. Furthermore, the openings in the wheels themselves and the exact positioning of the workstations appears suited for a single diameter of vial. The equipment also does not illustrate a facile interchange to permit its use for larger or smaller vials than that originally intended.
Furthermore, the mesh end-feed belt which accumulates a large number of vials together over a large area also provides difficulty in controlling the containers. Vials typically have a narrow width. As a consequence, knocking against each other in this arena may result in a number of them falling over. This clearly proves undesirable at the intake of the first star wheel.
In fact, the handling of a large number of vials and other containers represents an important task in itself. The Garvey Corporation of Blue Anchor, N.J., has a "Bi-Flo" unit (covered by U.S. Pat. No. 4,401,207) in which adjacent conveyor belts can move in either the same or opposite directions. This equipment can take items feeding in from one or more sources and provide them at a single or multiple outlets.
A somewhat similar type of equipment appears as the Unscrambler from McBrady Engineering, Inc. This equipment employs several adjacent conveyor belts moving in the same or different directions. This unit takes a large number of incoming containers and provides them at a discharge port. As the units move over conveyors traveling in the same direction, it finds that the speed of each succeeding conveyor has increased. This gradual acceleration unscrambles and separates the conveyors for the discharge port. A subsequent reverse conveyor prevents jamming by removing excess containers that might otherwise clog the outlet.
Although these units facilitate the handling of containers in general, they have not found applicability to improving the equipment which actually cleans and dries vials. The search continues for such equipment which can wash and dry vials thoroughly but utilizes a minimum of space and equipment. Furthermore, the handling of vials in a facile fashion also constitutes a continuing objective.